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The Tale of a Negro who Narrowly Escaped Death.

The other afters<& a coloured man was taken ill on the common, and would have fallen but for the timely assistance of two •bystanders. The man had been wandering ;at>out the comnion since morning, and had •been noticed' on' account of, the peculiar way in which he carried his head. It hung toward the right shoulder, and he seemed to take no pains to pull it into the position in which people commonly carry their heads. . He was/ respectable, dressed in clothes that had evidently been made for him, and his boots looked as if he had walked a considerable distance. When he had been assisted to a scat ho fainted, and when he regained consciousness he clutched at his throat, tore away his collar and said appealingly, "No, no! My God ! Not again !" His embarrassment when he looked about him was marked. One of the gentlemen who had assisted him to a seat left when the coloured man had recovered, but the other lemained ami questioned him as soon as he recovered his composure. He did not belong to 'Worcester, he said, and he had never "been hero before. He had walked from New Haven, begging shelter and food a& he went, and had only got to this city in the early morning. lie had no friends, and he said he a\ as not able to work. The man seemed flurried by his faintness and weak, and the humane poison who had remained by his bide took him to a restaurant and .saw 'him piopeilyfod. It was in a burst of gratitude and confidence at being <jo well treated that the colomed man told a tale so utterly marvellous as to be utterly unworthy of cicdence, were it not corroborated by known facts. It was sitting in the common after he had dined that he" said : "I have had trouble with my neck and been subject to tainting spells ever feince I was hanged in Arkansas." The expression was startling enough to make anyone think this man was ciazy ; but he was circumstantial as to details of time and place, and it id a well-known fact that a negro was legally hanged three years ago in Aikansas tor ai-'&aull on a white w^oman and afterward reco\end conscious1 nesF. The cape attracted much attention at the time. As published then, the negro was suspended ior 20 minutes after the drop of the old-fashioned platform gallows fell, and the body was, given by the .sherift to the father ot the young man, who, with some friends, was 'waiting near by with a wagon. Tt was the intention lo take him ; to tSic settlement where h3 formerly lived, and bury him there. TJ is >-eut,lcment was 14 miles f»om the county seat at which the hanging took place, and was through a lonely piece of country. When the waggon" was nearly at home, the father of The supposed corpse and his friends were staitled by groans coming from under the tarpaulin, thrown over the supposed dead man, and his struggles to get from under it. As soon as they had recoveied from their flight they went back to the wagon, from which they had fled, and helped the legally dead man up, gave him a drinkfrom the omnipresent jug of whisky, and took him home. Instead of leaving the settlement at once, the hanged man stayed aiound his old home, and the superstitious coloured people demanded his rearrest and the completion of the hanging. The case was taken to the Ciovcrnor, and pending discussion as to the right of the authorities to take cognizance of the existence of a convict who had been pronounced legally dead, the man fled and has been a wanderer ever since. i The story ot the negro coincided with the case a& recalled, and thei> wa^ no room to doubt that he really was the Aikansas culprit. It was only after repeated urging, sweetened with promises of help to leave the city in comfort, thai he told his story in the dialect of a Southern field-hand, some-what-tempered by i evidence in the North. Divested of its quaint dialect, his tale is weirdly and perhaps morbidly interesting. "I was locked up ; he sai'J,l"more than six months, but I never thought I was going to he hanged until the night before. Then I knew tho gallows was up and I £Gfc scared. They pjteyed with me all the lime j and tried to keep md from thinking of it, but I didn't heir whao they prayed about. I was too excited. I didn't go to sleep all the night before, and when they enme to fetch me I was so weak I couldn't stand up. The Sheriff gave me a drink of whisky and then they tied my elbows behind my back and took me along. I know theie were crowds around when I went to the gallows, but I didn't teem to see. 'em. I heard somebody Pinging and I joined in. Then they pushed me up on the gallows,' aud I saw the rope and got scared again, and tried to hang back, but they pushed me along and made me stand up straight. I recollect their putting the nooso on my neck and drawing it up tight, but I was thinking of whether they were coing to hurt me, and all at once I dropped. I had shut my eves when they pulled a piece of cloth over my face, but I opened them then and tried to get my hands up to tear the cloth off so I could see ; but all at once I thought some one hit me a terrible blow on the head and I lost my senses. "When I woke up I thought someone was choking me and tried to get loose, but I couldn't. Then it seemed as if my head was bursting and I saw awful lights before my eyes, and ! my feet and hands seemed to be 80 heavy I couldn't stir them. Then great rings of all sorts of bright colours began at ray eyes and went farther and farther off, growing bigger and fainter until I lost them. My head felt pricky all over, and so did my hands and leet, and I couldn't breathe, and then I fainted. Once I knew I was being hanged, but it was only for a second." The man told his story in almost commonplace fashion, but when he spoke of his life since it affected him. lf When I woke up in the wagon I was worse scared than before, and when I got j out from under the tarpaulin I thought I had been dreaming. Then, when my neck got to hurting me so, I knew what was the matter. For weeks afterward I could hardly swallow, and I couldn't turn my head, and I can't now very much. The cord 3 are all stiff on one side and drawn down." "I can never go home again," he said, " and 1 can never see or hear of my folks again. They were going to catch me and do it all over again, so I ran away. I've been knocking around ever since, principally in Canada, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania, but now 1 thought I'd come up here', where I might get some light work I could do." The man did not seem like the brute he rmifct havo been, and, in fact, he had the appearance of ordinary intelligence at least. According to his own story s he has done little work in his wanderings, andjhas begged both food and shelter and clothing. "Sometimes," he said, " 1 have wished that I had never come to life again. That's been when IVo been nearly frozen and starved. I never go near coloured people, for it was my own colour that tried to havo me hanged over, and I ,hate a black face." Asked if he, wasn't afraid of being arrested

! for,the'pldt!crime, hesairt : "No, boss; I don't think'" they'll ever look for me as long as 1 stay away from thero, and I'll never go back to Arkansas." — "Western Telegraph."

Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TAN18871119.2.15

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 229, 19 November 1887, Page 2

Word count
Tapeke kupu
1,371

The Tale of a Negro who Narrowly Escaped Death. Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 229, 19 November 1887, Page 2

The Tale of a Negro who Narrowly Escaped Death. Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 229, 19 November 1887, Page 2

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